5/28/2008 @ 6:25PM

Great American Nude

The resounding success of New York’s spring contemporary art auctions have momentarily allayed fears that the art market is in trouble. Christie’s and
Sotheby’s
both posted their highest totals ever and announced record-breaking prices for many of today’s most legendary artists.

The sale of Lucien Freud’s 1995 nude ”Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” for $33.64 million at Christie’s is still sending shockwaves through the art world. The provocative painting shattered the record for a work of art by a living artist sold at auction previously held by Jeff Koons’ monumental magenta heart. The shiny bauble sold at Sotheby’s
last November for $23.56 million.

Slightly less attention-grabbing, but no less important, was the sale of another nude lady at Sotheby’s. Tom Wesselmann’s 1963 ”Great American Nude No. 48,” a pivotal work in the history of modern painting, sold for $10,681,000, a record for this artist.

One of the founding members of Pop Art, Tom Wesselmann, along with artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist, revolutionized the way art is made. ”Great American Nude No. 48” is from a series Wesselmann created in the early 1960s, when Pop Art was still a fresh and exciting concept. The work, part painting and part sculpture, uses an old sink and an illuminated window as part of the composition.

In today’s art world where anything goes, we often forget that this type of work was once considered radical. Initial reaction to ”Great American Nude No. 48” was confusion mixed with shock. Critics didn’t know what to make of the work, which resembles a stage set more than a painting and makes sly reference to famous works of the past through placement of decorative objects and composition.

And then there’s the reclining nude woman.

Artfact Analysis:

In a day when headlines are made by works of art featuring dead sharks, chocolate religious figures, elephant feces, flower-covered puppies and monstrous cartoon characters, it’s easy to see why today’s artists are often accused of making art purely for shock value and publicity.

But back in the 1960s, the insertion of a flagrantly nude woman into a painting was highly provocative. Even into the freewheeling 1970s Wesselmann’s paintings were raising eyebrows. In a review of his show at the Janis Gallery in New York, Peter Schjeldahl wrote in the New York Times in April 1970 that Wesselmann’s paintings are “the most thoroughly and relentlessly ‘erotic’ in contemporary art,” and that the ”presence” of his nudes, ”this pneumatic creature,” is ”a dumb bundle of erotic energy.”

Whether artists are creating art to get their 15 minutes of fame or to feed the creative beast is a dead-end argument. The trend toward sensationalizing art is not limited to internationally acclaimed artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. Recently, controversy even hit the hallowed halls of academia with the planned senior exhibit of Aliza Shvarts, an art student at Yale. Shvarts’ senior project, centered on the topic of abortion, was deemed so disturbing that the university canceled her show. The result was huge international publicity for the young artist.

Pop artists in the 1960s, like Tom Wesselmann, were no strangers to controversy, but the monetary value of their work remained mostly unaffected until many years later, long after the shock value had subsided. That artists have endured controversy, ridicule and censorship is nothing new, but that these negatives now often come with a hefty paycheck is changing the game. The publicity received when a work has pushed the boundaries of acceptability can increase the value of the work exponentially.

”Great American Nude No. 48” belonged to Helga and Walther Lauffs, German collectors who had owned the painting since 1971. The Lauffs were serious collectors known for their good eyes and adventurous taste. The painting, along with many other notable works, had been on loan to the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, outside Dusseldorf, Germany, for many years. The museum strongly believed that the collection would one day come to them and was surprised and clearly disappointed when Helga Lauffs, widowed in 1981, suddenly decided to sell a large portion of the collection at Sothebys.

The strength of the art market has made this situation a common one for museums; collectors opt to sell rather than donate. In this case, the museum’s loss is one collector’s gain. Sotheby’s has not identified the buyer of ”Great American Nude No. 48,” but the individual paid nearly $4 million more for the piece than any previous bidder for a work of art by Wesselmann.

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